“Look what I’ve found,” Harry Jennings cried to his friend, Captain
Stanhope. The captain was sitting on a park bench reading his morning
paper, and Harry had been running races with Gyp up and down the gravel
walk. He came up to the bench, now, with a handful of souvenir post
cards in his hands.
[Sidenote: Applying “Golden Rule”]
“Some one has been addressing them here in the park, and then went off
and left them on the bench,” he continued. “See, they’re addressed to
people all over the country, and not a stamp on one of them!”
“I have seven cents in change,” said the captain, pulling out his worn
little purse. “That will send seven of them, but there are a dozen.”
Harry brought out a dime from his trousers pocket, and looked at it
thoughtfully. It would just pay his admission to the community ball game
that afternoon, and if he used half of it to send off a stranger’s
postcards, he must stay at home, for this was the last of his week’s
allowance. Still, there was the captain, the knight of a dozen
campaigns, looking at him. Harry knew that he allowed himself but one
cigar a week, for his pension was subject to heavy drains; and yet he
contributed his seven cents without hesitation. Surely, to share the
doing of a good turn with the captain would be worth staying home from
the ball game.
“Here’s a dime, and I’ll send the rest,” he told the captain. “Shall I
take them to the postoffice?”
The captain used the most subtly effective of all appeals to a child to
do right—he assumed a willingness to be generous on Harry’s part, and
offered him a comrade’s share in the deed. Not for worlds would Harry
have appeared stingy and selfish and little, before the captain. And
having set for himself a certain standard of generosity, it will not be
hard for Harry to be generous when his next opportunity comes, even if
there be no Captain Stanhope near to stimulate him.